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Cauliflower Cream Soup
Cook one pint of finely chopped cauliflower in a double boiler with one quart of milk until perfectly tender. Then press through a coarse sieve and return to the fire, season to taste, add one tablespoon of butter and one dessertspoon of cornstarch stirred smoothly in a little cold milk. Cook and stir until perfectly smooth and serve at once with small squares of buttered brown bread.-Mary F. Snider.
Soup as Our Mothers Made It The day before you want a soup buy a shank of beef. Wash clean and put to cook in two or three gallons of cold water. Bring slowly to a boil. Skim carefully as fast as the scum rises, so that none boils in; cook until the meat slips from the bone. Let the bone remain in the liquor all night and set away in a jar or other earthen vessel to cool; in the morning take off the fat from the top of the liquor and set it on the stove in your soup kettle. Have ready a large half teacup of whole rice and put it in when you set it to boil, which you must do in season to have three hours before the dinner hour.
Wash and scrape two good sized carrots cut in inch pieces, teacup of chopped cabbage, three potatoes and two onions cut small. Boil slowly but constantly on the back of the stove to prevent burning.
The rice should dissolve so as to thicken the soup. Just before you dish up add salt, pepper and other seasoning to taste.
Keep hot water in the teakettle to add to the soup if needed. -Mrs Sears, Omaha.
Two soups sit side by side here: a quick milk-based cauliflower purée and a full day's beef stock. Neither is difficult, but both use measures and habits that need translating.
- The measuresA dessertspoon is two teaspoons — halfway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. A "large half teacup" of rice is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup; period teacups were reckoned anywhere from about four to six ounces, so the phrasing is loose and the rice quantity need not be exact.
- Why the double boilerA pint of cauliflower cooked directly in a quart of milk over open heat can easily scorch and catch before the florets are tender. The double boiler keeps the milk below boiling; allow something like half an hour or more at a bare simmer in the outer pan, and go by the recipe's own test — perfectly tender.
- Sieve or blenderPressing through a coarse sieve gives the slightly grainy body the recipe intends. A blender or stick blender is faster but produces a smoother, more modern texture — pulse rather than purée if you want the original character.
- Thickening the cauliflower soupOne dessertspoon of cornstarch slaked in cold milk will thicken a quart only lightly. Add it off the boil, then bring back just to a simmer for a minute or two; cornstarch needs to reach near-boiling to set, but prolonged boiling thins it again.
- Brown breadIn a book of this period this means a dark steamed or whole-meal loaf rather than a light rye. Boston-style steamed brown bread, cut in small squares and buttered, is the closest match; a dense wholemeal will do.
- Shank of beefAsk a butcher for cross-cut beef shank with the marrow bone in, or a mixture of shin and marrow bones. Two or three gallons of water is a restaurant-sized batch — a single shank in four to six quarts gives a better-flavoured stock for a household.
- Do not cool it on the counterStanding a warm meat stock overnight in an earthen jar was normal in an unheated pantry and is the one instruction to ignore. Strain, cool the liquid quickly in a shallow pan or ice bath, and refrigerate it — a slowly cooling stock is textbook conditions for Clostridium perfringens, and reheating does not undo the damage.
- Skimming and the fat capSkimming as the scum rises, before it boils back in, is what keeps the broth clear. The layer of fat lifted off the chilled stock next morning is worth keeping for frying, not discarding.
- The rice does the thickeningThree hours of slow cooking is meant to break the rice down entirely. A medium- or short-grain white rice breaks down most readily; stir occasionally, and the vegetables can go in during the last hour so they are not reduced to pulp with it.
- YieldThe cauliflower soup serves four to six as a first course. The beef soup, made in the reduced quantity above, gives about three quarts — eight generous bowls.
Both of these came in from readers, which is how a great deal of recipe content was gathered around the turn of the century: signed contributions from named women, often with a home town attached, printed as sent. The pairing is telling. Mary F. Snider's cauliflower soup is a cream soup in the then-fashionable style, built on milk and a cornstarch liaison rather than a stock, quick enough for a household without live-in help and elegant enough to serve with buttered squares of bread in place of croutons. Mrs Sears's contribution, pointedly titled "Soup as Our Mothers Made It," is the older tradition: a shank bone, a two-day schedule, and whatever root vegetables the cellar held, with rice cooked to dissolution to give body that no roux or starch provides. That the two recipes sit side by side captures a moment when a kitchen might be running both economies at once — the long-simmered bone pot on the back of the range, and the delicate pur u00e9e made fresh in an hour.